KM_364e-20181205115548

by The Liberal Imagination (pdf)

  but the two indexed passages which refer to menstruation give no

  demonstrate that most individuals who engage in taboo activities

  information about its relation to sexual conduct.

  make satisfactory social adjustments." In this context either "neuroses

  Then too the Report explicitly and stubbornly resists the idea that

  and psychoses" are too loosely used to stand for all psychic maladjustsexual behavior is involved with the whole of the individual's charment, or "social adjustment" is too loosely used to stand for emoacter. In this it is strangely inconsistent. In the conclusion of its tional peace and psychic stability. When the Report goes on to cite

  chapter on masturbation, after saying that masturbation does no

  the "socially and intellectually significant persons," the "successful

  physical harm and, if there are no conflicts over it, no mental harm,

  scientists, educators, physicians," etc., who have among them "acit goes on to raise the question of the effect of adult masturbation cepted the whole range of the so-called abnormalities," we must keep

  on the ultimate personality of the individual. With a certain conin mind that very intense emotional disturbance, known only to the fusion of cause and effect which we need not dwell on, it says: "It

  sufferer, can go along with the efficient discharge of social duties, and

  is now clear that masturbation is relied upon by the upper [social]

  that the psychoanalyst could counter with as long a list of distinlevel primarily because it has insufficient outlet through heterosexual guished and efficient people who do consult him.

  coitus. This is, to a degree, an escape from reality, and the effect

  Then, only an interest in attacking straw men could have led the

  upon the ultimate personality of the individual is something that

  Report to insist that psychoanalysis is wrong in saying that any deneeds consideration." The question is of course a real one, yet the parture from sexual mores, or any participation in sexually taboo

  Report strenuously refuses to extend the principle of it to any other

  activities, involves a neurosis or a psychosis, for psychoanalysis holds

  sexual activity. It summarily rejects the conclusions of psychoanalysis

  ••

  nothing like this view. It is just at this point that distinctions are

  which make the sexual conduct an important clue to, even the crux

  needed of a sort which the Report seems not to want to make. For

  of, character. It finds the psychoanalytical view unacceptable for two

  example: the Report comes out in a bold and simple way for the natreasons: ( 1) The psychiatric practitioner misconceives the relation uralness and normality and therefore for the desirability of mouthbetween sexual aberrancy and psychic illness because only those sexugenital contacts in heterosexual love-making. This is a form of sexual ally aberrant people who are ill seek out the practitioner, who thereexpression which is officially taboo enough, yet no psychoanalyst fore never learns about the large incidence of mental health among

  would say that its practice indicated a neurosis or psychosis. But a

  the sexually aberrant. (2) The emotional illness which sends the

  psychoanalyst would say that a person who disliked or was unable

  sexually aberrant person to find psychiatric help is the result of no

  to practice any other form of sexual contact thereby gave evidence

  flaw in the psyche itself that is connected with the aberrancy but is

  of a neurotic strain in his psychic constitution. His social adjustment,

  the result only of the fear of social disapproval of his sexual conduct.

  in the rather crude terms which the Report conceives of it, might not

  And the Report instances the many men who are well adjusted sobe impaired, but certainly the chances are that his psychic life would cially and who yet break, among them, all the sexual taboos.

  show signs of disturbance, not from the practice itself but from the

  THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION

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  The Kinsey Report

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  psychic needs which made him insist on it. It is not the breaking

  dominant or even accepted would be different in nature and quality

  of the taboo but the emotional circumstance of the breaking of the

  from one in which it was censured.

  taboo that is significant.

  That the RePort refuses to hold this view of homosexuality, or any

  The Report handles in the same oversimplified way and with the

  other view of at least equivalent complexity, leads us to take into

  same confusing use of absolute concepts the sexual aberrancy which

  account the motives that animate the work, and when we do, we see

  is, I suppose, the most complex and the most important in our culhow very characteristically American a document the Report is. In tural life, homosexuality. It rejects the view that homosexuality is

  speaking of its motives, I have in mind chiefly its impulse toward

  innate and that "no modification of it may be expected." But then

  acceptance and liberation, its broad and generous desire for others

  it goes on also to reject the view that homosexuality provides evithat they be not harshly judged. Much in the Report is to be underdence of a "psychopathic personality." "Psychopathic personality" is stood as having been dictated by a recoil from the crude and often

  a very strong term which perhaps few analysts would wish to use

  brutal rejection which society has made of the persons it calls sexually

  in this connection. Perhaps even the term "neurotic" would be exaberrant. The Report has the intention of habituating its readers to treme in a discussion which, in the manner of the Report, takes

  sexuality in all its manifestations; it wants to establish, as it were,

  "social adjustment," as indicated by status, to be the limit of its

  a democratic pluralism of sexuality. And this good impulse toward

  analysis of character. But this does not leave the discussion where

  acceptance and liberation is not unique with the Report but very

  the Report seems to want to leave it-at the idea that homosexuality

  often shows itself in those parts of our intellectual life which are

  is to be accepted as a form of sexuality like another and that it is

  more or less official and institutionalized. It is, for example, far more

  as "natural" as heterosexuality, a judgment to which the Report is

  established in the universities than most of us with our habits of

  led in part because of the surprisingly large incidence of homosexcriticism of America, particularly of American universities, will easuality it finds in the population. Nor does the practice of "an inily admit; and it is to a considerable extent an established attitude creasing proportion of the most skilled psychiatrists who make no

  with the foundations that support intellectual projects.

  attempt to redirect behavior, but who devote their attention to help­

  That this generosity of mind is much to be admired goes without

  ing an individual accept himself" imply what the Report seems to

  saying. But when we have given it all the credit it deserves as a

  want it to, that these psychiatrists have thereby judged homosexuality

  sign of something good and enlarging in American life, we cannot

  to be an unexceptionable form of sexuality; it is rather that, in many

  help observing that it is often associated with an almost intentional

  cases, they are able to effect no ch
ange in the psychic disposition and

  intellectual weakness. It goes with a nearly conscious aversion from

  therefore do the sensible and humane next best thing. Their opinion

  making intellectual distinctions, almost as if out of the belief that an

  of the etiology of homosexuality as lying in some warp-as our culintellectual distinction must inevitably lead to a social discrimination ture judges it-of the psychic structure has not, I believe, changed.

  or exclusion. We might say that those who most explicitly assert and

  And I think that they would say that the condition that produced

  wish to practice the democratic virtues have taken it as their assumpthe homosexuality also produce other character traits on which judgtion that all social facts-with the exception of exclusion and ecoment could be passed. This judgment need by no means be totally nomic hardship-must be accepted, not merely in the scientific sense

  adverse; as passed upon individuals it need not be adverse at all;

  but also in the social sense, in the sense, that is, that no judgment

  but there can be no doubt that a society in which homosexuality was

  must be passed on them, that any conclusion drawn from them

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  which perceives values and consequences will turn out to be "undemocratic."

  The Report has it in mind to raise questions about the official

  restrictive attitudes toward sexual behavior, including those attitudes

  F Scott Fitzgerald

  that are formulated on the statute books of most states. To this end

  it accumulates facts with the intention of showing that standards of

  judgment of sexual conduct as they now exist do not have real reference to the actual sexual behavior of the p0pulation. So far, so good. But then it goes on to imply that there can be only one standard for the judgment of sexual behavior-that is, sexual behavior as it actually exists; which is to say that sexual behavior is not to be

  judged at all, except, presumably, in so far as it causes pain to others.

  "'So be it! I die content and my destiny is fulfilled,' said Racine's

  (But from its attitude to the "inconvenience" of the "wife in the

  Orestes; and there is more in his speech than the insanely bitter

  relationship," we must presume that not all pain is to be reckoned

  irony that appears on the surface. Racine, fully conscious of this

  with.) Actually the Report does not stick to its own standard of

  tragic grandeur, permits Orestes to taste for a moment before going

  judgment; it is, as I have shown, sometimes very willing to judge

  mad with grief the supreme joy of a hero; to assume his exemplary

  among behaviors. But the preponderant weight of its argument is

  role." The heroic awareness of which Andre Gide speaks in his essay

  that a fact is a physical fact, to be considered only in its physical

  on Goethe was granted to Scott Fitzgerald for whatever grim joy

  aspect and apart from any idea or ideal that might make it a social

  he might find in it. It is a kind of seal set upon his heroic quality

  fact, as having no ascertainable personal or cultural meaning and no

  that he was able to utter his vision of his own fate publicly and

  possible consequences-as being, indeed, not available to social interaloud and in Esquire with no lessening of his dignity, even with an pretation at all. In short, the Report by its primitive conception of

  enhancement of it. The several essays in which Fitzgerald examined

  the nature of fact quite negates the importance and even the exishis life in crisis have been gathered together by Edmund Wilsontence of sexuality as a social fact. That is why, although it is possible who is for many reasons the most appropriate editor possible-and

  to say of the Report that it brings light, it is necessary to say of it

  published, together with Fitzgerald's notebooks and some letters, as

  that it spreads confusion.

  well as certain tributes and memorabilia, in a volume called, after

  one of the essays, The Crack-Up. It is a book filled with the grief

  of the lost and the might-have-been, with physical illness and torture

  of mind. Yet the heroic quality is so much here, Fitzgerald's assumption of the "exemplary role" is so proper and right that it occurs to us to say, and not merely as a piety but as the most accurate expression of what we really do feel, that

  Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail

  Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt,

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  F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair,

  not going the way of Cole Porter and Rogers and Hart-we must

  And what may quiet us in a death so noble.

  always remember in judging him how many real choices he was free

  This isn't what we may fittingly say on all tragic occasions, but

  and forced to make-and he was gifted with the satiric eye; yet we

  the original occasion for these words has a striking aptness to Fitzfeel that in his morality he was more drawn to celebrate the good gerald. Like Milton's Samson, he had the consciousness of having

  than to denounce the bad. We feel of him, as we cannot feel of all

  misused the power with which he had been endowed. "I had been

  moralists, that he did not attach himself to the good because this

  only a mediocre caretaker ... of my talent," he said. And the parattachment would sanction his fierceness toward the bad-his first allel carries further, to the sojourn among the Philistines and even

  impulse was to love the good, and we know this the more surely

  to the maimed hero exhibited and mocked for the amusement of the

  because we perceive that he loved the good not only with his mind

  crowd-on the afternoon of September 25, 1936, the New York Eve­

  but also with his quick senses and his youthful pride and desire.

  ning Post carried on its front page a feature story in which the

  He really had but little impulse to blame, which is the more retriumphant reporter tells how he managed to make his way into the markable because our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming,

  Southern nursing home where the sick and distracted Fitzgerald was

  which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect. "Forbearance, good

  being cared for and there "interviewed" him, taking all due note of

  word," is one of the jottings in his notebook. When it came to blame,

  the contrast between the present humiliation and the past glory. It

  he preferred, it seems, to blame himself. He even did not much want

  was a particularly gratuitous horror, and yet in retrospect it serves

  to blame the world. Fitzgerald knew where "the world" was at fault.

  to augment the moral force of the poise and fortitude which marked

  He knew that it was the condition, the field, of tragedy. He is con­

  Fitzgerald's mind in the few recovered years that were left to him.

  scious of "what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake

  The root of Fitzgerald's heroism is to be found, as it sometimes

  of his dreams." But he never made out that the world imposes tragis in tragic heroes, in his power of love. Fitzgerald wrote much about edy, either upon the heroes of his novels, who
m he called his "brothlove, he was preoccupied with it as between men and women, but ers," or upon himself. When he speaks of his own fate, he does

  it is not merely where he is being explicit about it that his power

  indeed connect it with the nature of the social world in which he

  • appears. It is to be seen where eventually all a writer's qualities have

  had his early flowering, but he never finally lays it upon that world,

  their truest existence, in his style. Even in Fitzgerald's early, cruder

  even though at the time when he was most aware of his destiny it

  books, or even in his commercial stories, and even when the style is

  was fashionable with minds more pretentious than his to lay all percareless, there is a tone and pitch to the sentences which suggest his sonal difficulty whatever at the door of the "social order." It is, he

  warmth and tenderness, and, what is rare nowadays and not likely

  feels, his fate-and as much as to anything else in Fitzgerald, we

  to be admired, his gentleness without softness. In the equipment of

  respond to the delicate tension he maintained between his idea of

  the moralist and therefore in the equipment of the novelist, aggrespersonal free will and his idea of circumstance: we respond to that sion plays an important part, and although it is of course sanctioned

  moral and intellectual energy. "The test of a first-rate intelligence,"

  by the novelist's moral intention and by whatever truth of moral

  he said, "is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind, at the

  vision he may have, it is often none the less fierce and sometimes

  same time, and still retain the ability to function."

  even cruel. Fitzgerald was a moralist to the core and his desire to

  The power of love in Fitzgerald, then, went hand in hand with

  "preach at people in some acceptable form" is the reason he gives for

  a sense of personal responsibility and perhaps created it. But it often

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  THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  happens that the tragic hero can conceive and realize a love that is